


Tom Riddle Sr.

by limeta



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Sane Tom Riddle, Young Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/pseuds/limeta
Summary: Doesn’t cast out that wretched woman. Becomes an unwilling father. Tries not to hate his son.
Relationships: Abraxas Malfoy/Tom Riddle, Tom Riddle & Tom Riddle Sr.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 231





	Tom Riddle Sr.

When she tells him she is with child (’’A son! A son like you, Tom!’’) he wishes for it to be untrue. He wants more than anything to find a lie in her words – but before rage overwhelms him and he kicks her out for good out of his life – a seed of doubt stops him. Because what kind of man would he be if did turn away his child? If it even is his, a new voice hisses – the kind of voice that sounds a lot like his family.

They have warned him off from fucking beneath him. His son (if it even is a son) will become a monstrous apparition, will it not? Nothing good can come out of such an unwilling union. The words don’t want to pass past his lips, they are too foul. He cannot muster enough strength to articulate the deed done to him by this pleading, love-sick, mind-sick woman.

She is on her knees pleading with him. Calling him her god and begging that if he must hate her that he not hate their baby, their child, their beautiful, beautiful boy. ’’He will be like you. I just know it. I promise you he will be like you!’’ The woman screams so hard that she does not care for propriety anymore. Tears stream from her crooked eyes and disgust him further. He cannot look at her. He will never be able to drink another drink. If it means he must die, then he will die the worst death – starved and thirsty, but with his own wits and mind and body about him.

She will not use him for her goals any further. This he promises now, as the son of Thomas Riddle. As Lord Riddle.

He doesn’t tell her to leave the house. She is his legal wife and it is not Samaritan of him to cast her out. She may be carrying the devil’s child, but it is nonetheless his duty to see to it.

It may be vindicating. It may even be depraved, but Tom Riddle hopes that his unseemly wife dies in childbirth.

She does die.

Tom Riddle hates himself for this, but he honours the child’s mother by giving her the name she has wanted for him. Tom, after him (as if there are not enough Toms in this family) and Marvolo, after her father. A chill crawls up his arms when he remembers Marvolo Gaunt.

The child does look like him. It is eerie. He waits for it to grow horns, for its eyes to twist, for its babbles to turn satanic. None of this happens. He is left with a child and no mother to breast feed it. Tom gingerly takes the son (and she was right, it is his son) and rocks him. He hums a lullaby his mother has hummed at him. 

His son looks so ordinary. For the first time in his life, Tom wants to hope that everything will be okay. That he has escaped the horror of the Gaunts. His parents meet the child and tell him that this is the one good thing to come out of his escapade with the commoners and that if he wishes to slum, he best not do it with the staff. It is unseemly for the rich to meddle with the poor in such a way. It is not their place. They are undeserving of Riddle cocks and the like. Tom truly hopes his father stops speaking.

If Tom never looks at another woman again, it will be too soon. He is done. His parents have an heir to pamper. His duties to this family are over with.

The baby – and he’s started calling it the baby. It is odd to call him Junior. They are nothing alike. Tom can sense it. His brush with the satanic may have given him a new skill to exploit. Is he a circus freak now? When he drinks water he drinks it and remembers those months without freedom, without peace of mind. He remembers her naked, scarred, flayed, beaten, _bitten_ as she instructed him to fuck her. The way her words rolled off of her tongue, the way she _hissed_ with pleasure while rocking her hips, inviting him to fuck her with his cock.

Tom keens a cry whilst in the nursery and wakes the baby. It begins to cry along with him. Tom is not strong. He needs someone to protect him from these people. If someone else tries, he may not ever be free. He may have never been freed to begin with if that woman (he cannot even say her name) did not grow a conscience.

He must have strength, Tom decides, because he must soothe his son who needs him. He is not guilty of any crime for his mother’s crimes or his father’s fears. She will not taint this child of his with her presence and her existence. ’’I love you,’’ Tom says, ’’I do.’’ Because what kind of father doesn’t love his own son, his own flesh and blood? And the baby, young Tom, is indisputably his.

* * *

The child hisses like she does.

Tom must swallow down his fear as he crouches down in the grass with his son, to tell him that this is dangerous. He thinks about calling it satanic, but curiosity does best him. ’’What do they talk about, Junior?’’

’’Just the sun. They’re cold, dad.’’

He remembers the woman and how she was always cold to the touch. To check something, he places a hand to Junior’s face and it is warm like a human’s ought to be. Yes, this child is his. This child is human.

* * *

This child is a wizard.

A man in twinkly robes with red hair comes to his home. Tom Riddle remembers the Gaunts, remembers their style of dress that is unlike anything a normal man may wear –and threatens the man with a pistol he keeps on his person at all times. He has started doing this after getting back into the swing of living. The world is dangerous and he will never be caught off guard again.

But this person has a wand and he talks him down. ’’Mr. Riddle, there is no need for such measures. I am not here to hurt your young son. I am a professor.’’

Tom doesn’t speak. His son comes up to him and whispers to him that everything will be fine. That the Gaunts (and he must have told his son about them at one point, because the child does deserve to know where he comes from) cannot hurt him. Apparently one’s gone off into prison and the other got hit with a carriage. They’re safe from them. Both of them. His son eases him to sit down in a chair.

The man, Dumbledore, stirs in obvious discomfort. ’’I did not know you knew about wizards.’’

’’My mother was one.’’ The child – his boy – his son – his flesh and blood says.

’’A witch. Possibly.’’ Dumbledore nods. He grimaces. ’’A love potion, yes? Did she give your father something to drink?’’ He nods. Dumbledore bite his lip and nods, faintly aware that the magical world is dangerous in a way muggles often cannot comprehend.

’’Is the school mandatory?’’

’’Yes.’’ Dumbledore lies. He does not think home schooling is an option here. ’’Hogwarts is in Scotland.’’

’’Oh okay. Thank you, sir. I guess, since I have no other choice, I shall go.’’ Then the boy turns to his father and whispers, ’’there are holidays to return for?’’

’’Yes.’’ Dumbledore finds that his prejudice has been overturned. Children made from love potion can love. What else is fondness and love than how this child looks in worry at his father.

’’I’m everything he has, sir.’’ His voice is low and whispery, so his father doesn’t hear. Dumbledore glances back and sees that Tom Riddle has closed his eyes and cannot bring himself to speak anything more.

Dumbledore promises to come pick Tom up to show him how to get to Diagon Alley and such. ’’London is a while away from here, my boy.’’

The boy’s lips twitch. ’’Thank you, professor. Good travels.’’

Dumbledore tells him to pay attention to this. Because he’s about to show him something quite wicked, indeed. The boy looks and hangs his mouth open when the man spins in place and disappears.

* * *

Tom cannot accompany his son to this place. ’’I wish you well, Junior. Remember now, you’re representing us Riddles. We do not bow down to just anyone. Prove them all that you are superior.’’ Then, seeing how bold his son looks, he amends, ’’Just, try to do your best, won’t you? You might as well get an education.’’

’’I’ll still go to Cambridge.’’

Tom smiles softly at his boy.

’’All Riddle men go to Cambridge.’’

’’True. We’ll forge you papers and get you a proper education after you learn how to— do – magic.’’ Tom cannot say this. He doesn’t want to believe that there is a whole society of Junior’s people out there – just mingling about. Doing things. ’’Where were they during the Great War?’’ He mutters under his breath and thinks that if they can already do magic, that they may as well be helpful to the normal folk.

* * *

Tom Riddle does not enjoy getting stalked by his son’s professors. They must meet him. They must tell him – in person – what a prodigy his son is. Tom Riddle, propriety be damned and his upbringing as a Riddle discarded, slams the doors shut in their faces and tells them that he is armed.

They, apparently, from his son’s letters – pity him.

’’Your or me, Junior?’’

’’Me. They call my father insane. It’s quite helpful, actually. Most of the girls have stopped antagonizing me.’’

Tom snorts. Then worries that by his outward hatred for witches and women he may have hurt his son. A mother is an integral part of a young boy’s raising, isn’t she? God, is his son queer? Is he queer? Tom Riddle begins to spiral as he thinks about all of these nightmare scenarios that are only nightmares because of the time he has grown up in, and the trauma he is trying to get over.   
’’Dad, are you all right?’’

Tom screams at the mere thought of what his father might say.

* * *

Tom Riddle is not queer. He goes off to see someone. A squib doctor. Squib is such an ugly word. They talk it out. He gets informed about the wizarding world, about amortentia, about the influence it has on the person ingesting it – and then they delve into trauma.

’’What is your relationship with your mother like?’’ No therapist can go without asking this.

Tom Riddle might as well tell the man. He loses nothing.

* * *

’’Are you getting on over there?’’ Tom asks his son. They are out hunting. He would teach his son how to ride a horse, but every time he gets up on one he remembers that woman and he screams so hard until his vocal chords bleed. Tom carries a gun and Junior carries around a bag to poach rabbits for. The hunting dogs like him quite a lot. They rub against his legs and Junior gives them pats.

’’Where?’’

’’Hogwarts. Nobody’s bullying you?’’

’’Now when I tell them that my mother’s a witch, no. Then they become amicable.’’ Junior asks him if he can hunt game today. He is fourteen. Tom worries, though. He tells him that he is much too young to kill anything.

The boy scoffs, but does not fight him. ’’Did you know being queer is legal in their law?’’

Tom misses aim and the rabbit he’s spotted scampers off. ’’Why would I want to know something so foul?’’

His son straightens up and twitches his mouth. He does this when he’s hurt. When he has something to say, but realises that it is a bad time to do so. Tom sighs and puts the safety on the gun. He asks his son what he has to say: ’’Come on, son, you can tell me.’’

He doesn’t say anything. ’’It is fine, father. Let us hunt. I just found things strange. Women have been able to vote for decades.’’

Tom does find that strange. ’’How macabre. It is like watching a mirror world where everything is upside down.’’

’’Yes.’’ His son bites out. ’’Quite.’’

* * *

Thomas Riddle, Tom Riddle Sr., and Tom Riddle Jr. walk into the drawing room ought to be the start of a bad joke. It isn’t. It’s the start of a down spiralling tragedy wherein Tom’s mother is dead, Thomas’ wife is passed, and Junior has grown quite shaken at the idea of death.

So shaken, in fact, that when Thomas Riddle begins dressing down Tom – as he is known to do, he has taken it as his god given right as Tom’s father – Junior takes out his wand and tells him to shut up. ’’Grandmother is dead and all you have to show for your grief is to attack my father. All of that good breeding you speak of is grotesque. You tell your son that he is not man enough because he does not have a second wife – you worry that he is queer or insane and that he keeps things from you – well he does keep things from you. He has kept things from you to protect me.’’ He takes a step forward. The wand is outstretched like a pistol, but it is much more deadly. A gun can only shoot.

’’I do not like you, grandfather. I do not tolerate you willingly. Only because my father tells me to keep my mouth shut. Sons do not talk back to their fathers, this I’ve learned –’’ Tom has never hit his son for speaking to him, but he must have seen the time Thomas has struck Tom for this or that, ’’but I hold no fear for you in my heart.’’

The room gets washed in a sea of green.

* * *

Tom, yet again, feels betrayed for trusting magical people. ’’Leave.’’ He whispers, because he cannot find enough strength to yell – ’’Leave and don’t come back.’’ His father’s body is cooling to the touch.

His son leaves, halfway into saying something (again, deciding that Tom will probably not want to hear it).

* * *

Junior doesn’t go to Cambridge like all Riddle men. Tom goes to check the enrolment, but there aren’t any names that could be his son. He is theirs now. Not a meagre muggle like he is now.

That woman has ruined his life, has ruined women for him, and left him traumatized.

His son has ruined his life, has ruined his family for him (not that he needed much help, anyhow – his father was terrible, but he was still his father and he still loved him – loves him? Does he love him now that he does not have to see him?) , and has left him painfully hurt.

* * *

Years pass. He gets a letter from a man named Abraxas Malfoy. It is an invitation to have lunch.

Tom doesn’t know what comes over him (the grief, the loneliness, the fear, the worry, the anxiety, a devilish combination of all), but he decides to go.

They go to a muggle restaurant. The man is dressed in a muggle suit. It is the 50s, but the suit does look a decade out of date. The wizards never keep track of stylistic differences in muggle attire. Why would they? They see muggles as pawns to kill off at their fancy.

’’I know your son. He goes by another name now.’’ Abraxas informs him.

Tom knows. There are too many Toms in his family. Now, however, he is the only Tom.

They sit and chat. Abraxas quietly asks him if he is getting on well. ’’If you need help, I would be happy to give you an elf –’’ Tom knows what an elf is, he doesn’t want any such demonic forces, thank you. ’’- or you could come and visit. I am certain your son wants to see you.’’

’’He did not send you on his behalf then.’’ Tom cranes his neck to appraise Abraxas. The man holds himself like a lord. Is this a friend? His son has never mentioned many friends. Not that Tom’s asked. He still doesn’t know whether to ask.

’’No, I am here to speak my own words, thank you.’’ Abraxas is miffed. He raises his brows and scoffs as he waves his hand around imperiously, ’’I am a Malfoy, good sir, I do not like to be taken for a toy. Your son and I are equals.’’

Tom looks back on that hunting trip with Junior (not Junior anymore, his son has transformed into a man right before his eyes). ’’He’s a queer.’’ He doesn’t say it with malice, but there is no pride in that realisation.

His father, Thomas, was a vocal man, with vocal thoughts, with petrifying cane swings when angered. Tom finds that he loves him less each passing day since his death. He has buried him with mother, for her sake. There is nothing good in remembering him.

’’Yes, your son and I are involved.’’ Abraxas tells him. There is steel when he speaks now. He will not have Tom ruin this. He will not have Tom make his son feel bad about any of this. How could he possibly do that? These wizards, backwards and upside down as they are, do not see it as abnormal. They see him, afraid of his own shadow, as abnormal. And maybe he is. Maybe he is abnormal and sad to look upon, but it is better to live in fear than to live in agony whilst not being able to tell dream from reality.

’’Do you love him?’’

’’More than anything, lord Riddle.’’

Tom nods. What else is he to do, really?

’’Is he well?’’

Abraxas nods. ’’He is quite well, thank you. He would be better, I feel, if you met with him.’’

’’Does he regret killing my father? His own flesh and blood?’’ Tom’s words bite, he can tell. Abraxas looks at him for a while and shakes his head.

’’No, I do not think he will ever feel bad about that. Why should he, really?’’ For a moment Tom thinks if he will see that his son has involved himself with another bigot like that woman was (another one who thinks muggles, ordinary folk like him (not normal, only ordinary now) are to be destroyed and played around with for fun). But Abraxas is not such a person. He is the kindest wizard he has ever met. ’’Your son is scared for your health. He hears you do not leave your home as often as you did. Would you permit him to come by once a month, at least?’’ At Tom’s flabbergasted look, Abraxas amends. ’’Fine, at most. If you do not want to see him, at least let him see you.’’

Tom does know why he accepts this offer. He misses his boy.

* * *

His boy has gone mad.

’’It’s an anagram.’’

’’It is ridiculous.’’

His mood sours.

Tom corrects himself. ’’There are enough Toms in our family. It is good you have found another name for yourself. Tell me; how _did_ you come about it?’’

’’You disowned me. I had no claim to anyone and it would be better to create myself anew.’’

They are not sitting in the home where the murder has happened. No, they are outside in the garden playing croquet. Neither of them wants to hold a weapon that can kill. Neither of them wants to be reminded of killing.

’’So, Lord Voldemort?’’

Voldemort nods. ’’Yes,’’ his eyes are redder than before. Tom doesn’t want to ask why. He doesn’t want to know. Voldemort gets a point. This continued excellence of his son’s is growing to be hard to swallow as the years pass and Tom grows more jaded in old age.

’’Can we start again?’’ Voldemort asks. He wants to start again. ’’You are my father.’’

’’Until I grow too weary for you and you kill me?’’ Tom bites out. He has no patience anymore. He feels caged by gods, made to play a game for their own amusement. The boy’s mother, the boy himself now. Tom feels like he will forever be a victim of his own surroundings. That thought haunts his dreams and leaves him stricken with cold sweat and tears.

’’I could never kill you.’’ Voldemort speaks softly. He looks ahead in shame. The boy has never been good at keeping eye-contact with many people. His grandfather has called him weak and a changeling and a faggot and so many other things. Tom doesn’t remember his father as his father anymore, only his jailer. ’’You loved me.’’ Voldemort’s voice cracked. ’’You loved me in spite of my mother’s blood.’’

Tom closes his eyes and feels lightheaded. He can hear Voldemort – his son – his boy – his child trying to keep himself afloat, but the emotions are still strong within him. He doesn’t look at him, concentrating on the croquet bat.

He sits down on the grass and says that he hopes he will be able to get the stains out of this suit. It is his best one.

’’You never wear your best one when doing sport.’’ Voldemort whispers, but he eases next to him on the grassy field. They huddle together, overlooking their joint estate. And it is Voldemort’s still. Tom will never take it away from his son.

’’I gathered seeing my son after so many years again garnered such a suit.’’ Tom closes his eyes. ’’Visit me whenever you like, please.’’

’’Thank you.’’

They sit together. Father and son. There is nothing more to be said.


End file.
